ServerFault (and most SE sites) aren't designed to have vague quasi-religious debates about something as nebulous and subjective as why Linux became more popular than BSD.
The network is supposed to be a focused, solution-centred set of sites - as evinced by this from ServerFault's FAQ:
"You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page."
1. They locked it when it got attention. So most people thought it was fine until some pedantic, overzealous admin noticed it.
2. Where else am I supposed to ask a question like this? These are actually really important question in understanding the history and context of why people make decisions.
3. There are plenty of problems which programmers face every day that have no definitive answer. Should I start a new namespace or not in scenario a? Should I use framework x or framework y? What are the long-term downsides to approach z?
These fit the SO model fine, it's just that there are a bunch of pedants out there locking these extremely valuable questions.
Also fracturing the community with all these different exchange sites is actually getting really irritating. programmers.stackexchange.com, for example, is filled with very poor advice to lots of programming questions that get upvoted as it seems to attract architect astronauts.
Stack is similar to HN, stuff pops up to the front page based on popularity and moderation is given to users who collect enough points. So giving it a lot of traffic gets it in front of the mods which got it shutdown for the reason given above. So dumb yes nefarious not really.
Some of the best, most insightful and useful answers have been chatty, open-ended discussions on SE... While I get the need for moderation, as the parent pointed out, the answers and debate were very civilised and relatively fact-based.
And things are better understood with some context. Often, there is nothing better than the recollection of "those who were there" for understanding why something is the way it is.
And not infrequently, "those who were there" hold a diversity of opinions. Having access to these provides the reader with context.
At the end of the day, chatty, open-ended discussions are not what StackExchange is about. It's a really focused site designed around Q&A on specific, clearly answerable questions.
They may have made some bad decisions but closing this thread ain't one of them.
I agree with you, to a degree. StackOverflow is a good example of specific, clearly answerable questions. Many of the SE sites have topics which are, by their very nature, far less clear. Take "the workplace" for example - is anything on that site going to be fact based, and clearly answerable? I don't think so. When you move into topics dominated by softer, fuzzy areas, the applicability of that particular moderation rule also becomes fuzzy.
Agreed. For every foo.stackexchange.com there is already a meta.foo.stackexchange.com and a chat.foo.stackexchange.com. Why not add idle.foo.stackexchange.com to the mix?
The problem with this is that a lot of conclusions are drawn from discussion. StackExchange with its almost nazi-like moderation forces no discussion, resulting in very biased answers which favour those with a not necessarily well deserved or earned reputation.
I much prefer to have a few opinions on the table and form my own from them.
Yeah, there are a lot of really bogus answers on some of the questions. Usually there is something of value there if you know what you're doing, though.
Also I don't have the ability to downvote crappy answers because I'm not special enough or something, which really irritates me to no end...
> Also I don't have the ability to downvote crappy answers because I'm not special enough or something ...
You need to accumulate 500 karma points, after which you can downvote. This is to prevent people opening throwaway accounts and instantly downvoting something they don't like.
Not exactly what you are looking for, but there are a few archives which try to save the deleted questions from StackOverflow (I don't know about the other SE sites). E.g. http://stackoverflow.hewgill.com/
The network is supposed to be a focused, solution-centred set of sites - as evinced by this from ServerFault's FAQ:
"You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page."